While I was in there . . .

[type11969]

And hit with some canned sage green paint from Paint Scratch:

I'm completely aware that this could look way better with more time spent on the bodywork, but really the whole car needs to be stripped and painted. So in the meantime, this makes the most sense. Doesn't look too bad, definitely matte compared to the OG paint, but maybe someday I'll polish it up a bit too.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

Engine going back together:

And going back in:

Note that I painted the battery tray and newly-removable air cleaner mount.

It was right about now that I realized that the oil filter check valve was blown out - something I had noticed during disassembly but said to myself, hey, I'll surely remember to replace during re-assembly. Nope. Of course in order to pull the filter mount off, you have to pull off the oil cooler. To get off the oil cooler, you have to take off the fan shroud. And to take of the fan shroud, you have to drop the exhaust (not shown as installed in the photo).

Next time I'll take better notes.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

And some lovely welder ground wire art. Time to sweep up.

Rest assured, this mess was cleaned up before engine reassembly!

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

All buttoned up:

Yup, the bumper is pretty wavy, a PO had poorly installed a hitch that used the itself to spread the load. Scary.

Unfortunately no good photos of the backdated exhaust bits. I scrubbed the tins, fixed the holes, high temp painted and cured in a toaster oven where possible. I found (what appeared to be) NOS 72-74 heat exchangers at a swap meet here in NJ - no interest all day - some times pays to be in an area where there aren't too many buses left! They may actually be remans from back in the day, but for $250 total, not a bad deal.

I'm running a ceramic coated merged header that I just bought from AC.net. I was sold on the "made in the USA" claim, and it is really nice, but it didn't fit as well as I had hoped. Some misalignment to the heat exchangers and interference with the oil tube. The latter was fixed with a bit of percussive persuasion, and the former was pulled out with hardware (as best as possible).

The exhaust in this photo isn't the final, this is an old glasspack muffler I had sitting around. It is loud.

As far as the rebuild's health is concerned, 125-132 psi across the bores cold. 9-11% leakdown across the bores cold. I'm happy with the compression test, leakdown isn't great, but I'm using a crappy HF tester. I ended up running it at 100psi and took a look at % change to evaluate (instead of using the built in gauge indicator), but everything I've read has indicated that leakdown tests are much better as a differential assessment since each gauge behaves differently.
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

And finally, this is where I stand today:

Working through fabbing up "mufflation".

Based on posts here and elsewhere, the single QP muffler is still pretty loud. I'm not a huge fan of the vintage speed option because it is not merged - I want the hot exhaust gases out quietly, but quickly too. So "custom" it is.

I found a magnaflow (or similar) muffler with the inlet/outlet on the same side, thought it was going to be perfect, but ended up being much too large. Then I (almost literally) tripped over a Leistriz muffler off of a 914 in my garage - completely forgot I had it, but found that it was in great shape (probably why I kept it). I suspect it was replaced shortly before the car was parked for good.

So, I located the muffler below the pass frame rail, maybe losing a bit of ground clearance. To connect the header to the muffler, I wanted to add a bit more mufflation than a straight pipe. So I cut up the glass pack. I took about 8" out of the center, welded it shut, and welded flanges on the end.

You can see that the tube pulled a bit when welding, I'll need to cut/re-weld to get the muffler level. I also need to add muffler supports. And I need to clean-up/paint.

At idle and when blipping the throttle, it sounds pretty good (I'll try to post a video on youtube and link it) - not surprisingly much quieter than the GP alone. I haven't yet driven it as-is.

The engine no longer starts hard when cold, but I do still have a periodic mis-fire. My WBO2 is swinging from rail to rail when driving, so I think a calibration is in order. I may also need to do a more thorough leak check of the exhaust and intake (pull the rockers and pressurize). I also plan to instrument all of the spark plug bores with CHT sensors to see if I can better figure out the source of the misfire - I'm going to try placing thermocouples on the exhaust tubes at the heads to look at the temp differential between them (also to assess misfire), but I haven't yet figured out the best way to do this.

So, more to come, but it will come much more slowly now. Thanks for reading!

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[raygreenwood]

Is that the stainless T-bird style header that VW heritage sells?
Ray

[type11969]

Ceramic coated carbon steel from AC.net - made in the USA drew me in, but still had some fitment issues. If I knew I was going to have to deal with them, I would have gone SS from wherever.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[furgo]

[type11969]

There are a few seam welds along the bottom legs and the two arms - it is pretty obvious once you take a closer look. It probably would be tough to take it out cleanly with the engine and battery in place.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

Grabbed my thermocouple simulator from work to check the accuracy of my dakota digital gauge:

Not too bad, numbers on the left are the settings on the simulator, numbers on the right were read off of the DD. Connector at ambient (~87degF).

I did think the DD would be better than this, but I'm sure this is way better than a VDO. I'll repeat with a heat gun warming up the connection in the engine bay to see if the readings drift at all.

Leveled and stripped the muffler and "resonator", found some rot in the muffler that I repaired, added a tab tying off the muffler to the header flange, added a muffler hanger from the spare threads in the frame rail, trimmed and welded on a tailpipe, and painted. Raw photos are sitting in my garage, but here are some of the finished product. Sorry they are a bit washed out, lighting in my garage isn't the best.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[type11969]

Engine overheat root cause found. Back when I didn't know any better, I hooked up the DD thermocouple wires at the dash according to staggered length, not according to color. I still don't understand why DD provided the harness with a split that has two long red wires and two short yellows, but regardless, I now know that this swap resulted in two additional thermocouple joints. I don't know specifics about the offset created, but while driving yesterday, I hit 390degF at 60mph under light to medium load with 75degF ambient. Too hot. I hate to think what the actual CHT was when going up grades at full throttle. I need to take a closer look at mixture under light-medium loading conditions and I wonder if full advance with my vac dist is an issue as well.

Expensive mistake.

And to add to it, I've been so focused on the engine that I totally forgot that I drained the tranny fluid at some point during this year long R&R. My tranny notified me of this mistake by a new high pitched whine in 3rd/4th, and a noisy R&P. I'm sure I didn't catch this moronic mistake soon enough, but I'll try filling and running before tearing the engine/tranny out again for a rebuild. Any suggestions for getting oil everywhere inside the tranny before placing it under load? I was thinking about filling, getting the wheels off the ground, and running for a bit in gear. Excessive?

Not a great week for my hobby, but I have no one to blame but myself.

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[busdaddy]

Ouch!
Sorry to hear this

Idling a few minutes with the clutch pedal out will oil the entire transmission once its refilled, the spinning shafts will distribute it everywhere.
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

Слава Україні!

[Spike0180]

[type11969]

Thanks, I knew it was splash fed, wasn't sure how splashy it was when idling.

Been reading up on the gl4-gl5 debate, won't go in to that here, any worthwhile additives to use, all things considered? Anything that cures stupid mistakes?

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD

[secretsubmariner]

[Spike0180]

[furgo]

[type11969]

[type11969]

[type11969]

Regarding the alt rebuild, when you take the back cover off, you will be greeted by a connector like the one that connects the voltage regulator to the harness and a ring terminal. Assuming that connector is in good shape, all you need to do is pop the old wires out (small screwdriver from the connection side works well, there is a small tab that needs to be bent down -
note wire location before pulling them out of the backside of the connector), cut new ones to length, crimp on the terminals, and bolt on or pop in to the old connector.

This is the ring terminal I used:

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/te-conne...ND/2233252

And this is the quick disconnect terminal I used:
https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=A27935CT-ND

And the crimpers (you should use a decent crimper on these terminals, not the usual "insulated" crimp jaws):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002STTTI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

10 gauge wire for the alt, 16 or 18 for the rest. I slid the harness through some long lengths of heat shrink tubing and used a heat gun to shrink it up. Pretty straightforward.

I haven't looked, but it is very possible that the quick disconnect connectors are still available new as well.

Rebuilding the entire engine harness is pretty much the same story. I can post the digikey part numbers for this if you are interested (I believe this is already up on the samba somewhere).

-Chris
_________________
1969 VW Beetle - t4ed indeed
1971 Porsche 914 - jackstanded
1976 Westy - DD